Network devices (such as routers and switches) are often used to forward traffic within a network and/or across networks. These network devices may be available to users in many forms. For example, routers may be offered as physical devices and/or virtual solutions. In the physical form, a router may include a memory device whose memory capacity remains fixed and/or invariable due to the physical nature of the device itself. In the virtual form, a router may be provisioned a memory allocation of an underlying physical host device.
Network devices often include a control plane and a forwarding plane. For example, a virtual router may include a control plane that determines how to handle incoming traffic. The virtual router's control plane may store networking objects that define paths from the virtual router to various destinations within a network. In this example, the virtual router may also include a forwarding plane that moves incoming traffic from an ingress interface to an egress interface. Like the virtual router's control plane, the virtual router's forwarding plane may store networking objects that define paths from the virtual router to various destinations within the network.
In a traditional configuration, the control plane may distribute many, if not all, of the networking objects to each physical device that corresponds to the forwarding plane. Unfortunately, this mass distribution of networking objects may be inefficient, resource-intensive, and/or unnecessary. For example, the virtual router may include a routing engine that corresponds to the control plane and a forwarding engine that corresponds to the forwarding plane. The forwarding engine may consist of multiple Flexible Physical Interface Card Concentrators (FPCs).
In one example, each networking object stored in the routing engine may apply to only one of the FPCs in the forwarding engine. Despite the limited applicability of the networking objects, the routing engine may still distribute all the networking objects to each FPC in the forwarding engine, thereby leading to unnecessarily long convergence times. As a result, the FPCs may end up storing networking objects that do not even apply to them, thereby leading to inefficient use of the FPCs' memory. Moreover, the FPCs may necessitate superfluous memory capacities to facilitate storing these inapplicable networking objects, thereby leading to increased memory costs.
The instant disclosure, therefore, identifies and addresses a need for additional and improved apparatuses, systems, and methods for improving convergence across virtual control and forwarding planes within network devices.